Xwiljan
Classification and Dialects Phonology Consonants '''N.B. '''All plosives (except q and including l) can be aspirated ʰ or labialised ʷ. The sound written in the chart is the recognised sound but letters in [] are allophones and also /t/ is often dental t̪,/l/ is sometimes ɬand /s/ is rarely ʃ . Vowels Phonotactics Xwiljan is a ©©V©© system but most of the time it is ©V or ©©V In the onset, a fricative is allowed before a plosive or a liquid/semivowel after a plosive (of course it can just be a plosive/fricative/liquid) and in the coda there can be a plosive before a fricative or a liquid/semivowel before a plosive (again the same rule applies). Writing System Romanisationː Xwiljan's own writing system will be coming soon. Grammar Nouns Nouns are split into 6 classes (Heavenly things, Earthly things, animate things, inanimate things, male or female things. A Heavenly thing is not classified any further than a Heavenly thing but an Earthly thing can be animate or inanimate and an animate thing can be male or female. There is also an object marker -ki to clearly mark the object. So a dog would be mpunahi (m- earthly -pun- dog -ah- animate -i male). The stacking order for affixes is from top to bottom (i.e. animate would come before male). However, since only animate things can be male and only earthly things can be animate, there is no need to encode these on the noun, only the masculine suffix -i is needed so mpunahi -> puni. The other parts (animacy and earthliness), however, would be encoded on the verb. There are no articles in Xwiljan. Verbs Verbs in Xwiljan are very strange. To start off with, there are (technically) only 3 verbs: * uphina - happens * kuwa - goes * qana - comes These are used for tense and the main verb becomes a participle. I will go on to tenses a bit later, but first let's look at a sentence in the present tense: I eat the dog, which roughly turns into -> eating (by me) happens to dog eating = umru and I = ma so "eating (by me)" becomes umruma. We already know that dog = puni but since it is the subject here it becomes puniki. "Happens" is uphina but as I said previously in the nouns section the earthliness and animacy go onto the verb so uphina becomes muphinah. Putting all these bits together we get: puniki umruma muphinah. (dog.C5.SUB eat.PART.I C2.happen.C3) As you can see the word order is technically OSV but it is a little more complicated because "umru" is technically a participle. If there is a subject that is not a pronoun then its classes also go onto the verb. If it shares any classes with the object they are not repeated but if one is different then it comes before the object's classes. For example: The dog eats the stone -> eating (by dog) happens to stone. stone is (root) kriwi and it is inanimate so does not take gender but is the subject so becomes kriwiki (in full it would be mkriwiwki because -(i)w shows its inanimacy). The verb "uphina" must have m- added since both nouns are earthly and it will have -(a)h and -(i)w added in that order because the subject is animate (and its class comes first) and then the object is inanimate. So: kriwiki umru puni muphinahiw (stone.SUB eat.PART dog.C5 C2.happen.C3.C4) - as you can see the subject's class (C3) comes before the object's (C4) on the verb. Tenses As I have mentioned, tenses are shown by the use of different verbs: * uphina = happens = present tense (think of the event happening now in time) * kuwa = goes = past tense (think of the event going away from everyone in time) * qana = comes = future tense (think of the event coming towards everyone in time) These verbs are used exactly like in the previous example. E.G. I will eat the dog -> eating (by me) comes to dog. puniki umruma mqanah. (dog.C5.SUB eat.PART.I C2.come.C3) Aspect There are six types of aspect in Xwiljan: # Perfective/Imperfective # Progressiveness # Continuousness # Successfulness # Distance (in time) of the event # Habituality A verb on its own can be either perfective or imperfective but to make it clear that you mean perfective you can add phah after the verb. If an action is progressive it automatically makes the verb imperfective and progressive. It can be progressive in any tense although it is unlikely that it is progressive in the future ("I will be eating"). Progressiveness is marked by khah after the verb. Continuousness is similar to progressiveness except it is a state rather than an action happening right now (e.g. "I am in reading a book, right now," is progressive but "At the moment, I am in the state of reading a book but I am not reading it right now." Similar to if someone asks you what book you are reading at the moment when you aren't reading a book. Continuity is marked by "main" after the verb (lit. still). Successfulness is whether the intended goal of an action was achieved. twi is used for successful (e.g I stabbed the man - and now he is dead) or thi is used for unsuccessful (I stabbed the man - but he didn't die). thi can also be used for uncertainty of successfulness. Both of these come after the verb but can be left out, they are only really used when the successfulness needs to be clear. A verb can either be in the near/far future/past. faru (lit. near/close) is used for near future/past and nax (far/long way) is used for far future/past. Both come after the verb. For example "puniki umruma mkuwah faru" /pu.ni.ki um.ɾu.ma m.ku.wah ɸa.ɾu/ means "I ate the dog not long ago." Habituality is whether the action was being repeated, is being repeated or will be repeated many times - habitually. lhuwas lhulta (many times) is used to signify habituality. For example "puniki umruma mkuwah lhuwas lhulta" means "I ate the dog many times," but can be translated as "I used to eat the dog." Syntax Lexicon Example text